DIY: Make a Romantic Bacon Scented Survival Candle

Hey all of you bacon fanatics, did you know you can enjoy your bacon even after the meal is over? That’s right! Keep reading for a quick tutorial on how to make a Bacon Grease Survival Candle.

When you fry bacon, the resulting grease is nothing more than rendered pork fat. A common word for rendered animal fat is ‘TALLOW”. The word LARD is most often used for rendered pig fat. Tallow can be used for all kinds of things, including a wax-like fuel for homemade candles. Tallow can also be used for making pemmican, as a waterproofing agent and also as a lubricant. It also makes an excellent bait for attracting animals.

After you’ve fried a big skillet of bacon, pour the grease into a jar. You can filter it if you want but I’ve found it works just as well unfiltered. The little bacon bits aren’t going to hurt anything.

BE CAREFUL! Hot bacon grease will burn you – so take it easy. As the bacon grease cools it will solidify. Before it goes solid you will want to drop in a natural fiber wick. I use cotton twine for all of my wicks, but a little strip of cotton t-shirt will work equally as well. Got a mop? Mop heads are typically made of cotton fibers and make perfect wicks. You can pick up a replacement mop head at the dollar store for $1 and have all the wicks you’ll ever need. I had a bunch of tampon strings left over from my SURVIVAL TAMPON post so I just used one of those for this candle :).

I used a tooth pick to suspend the wick in the bacon grease until it turned solid. 5 minutes in the fridge and it’s ready to go, otherwise you’re looking at a half hour or so.

THAT’S IT! It’s really that easy.

Now, just sit back with your favorite book and enjoy the subtle faint aroma of the best smell on Earth – BACON!

In a wilderness survival scenario you can easily make a camp candle using a mussel shell or make-shift clay bowl.

We live (and prep) in a residential area. It would be dangerous and suicidal for me to make and burn this candle.

A survival candle would be used during a crisis when I’m eating out of the food storage and the scent of bacon only makes me more hungry to eat more of the limited food supply in my storage.

The *LAST* thing that I want in a crisis situation is to burn a bacon-scented candle that attracts bugs, flying-crawlies, vermin, looters, hungry zombie-neighbors who didn’t prepare for the disaster, and rapists who believe that there might be a wife or young-daughter in my kitchen frying bacon.

Isn’t there a danger of a grease fire using this bacon fat candle, or am I missing something? I’m always thinking about safety, and I’ve seen a skillet with grease catch fire before. It’s possible that the grease in the little bowl doesn’t get hot enough to burst into flames, right?

That’s a great waste of bacon grease. I use it for scrambling my eggs. Yes, if all else fails, my hens will still lay eggs. Plus, bacon grease is good in place or Crisco and oils. Can we just kill a possum and make a candle of its fat?